Historical path of traditional and modern idea of ‘conscious universe’

What this study shows is that although the ‘idea of conscious universe’ is given further advance by some discoveries of modern sciences, it was articulated by many ancient and previous thinkers. Philosophically, the idea of ‘Consciousness’ can be traced back to ancient times and can be proven through historical documents in various traditions, cultures and religions. In this study, the ideas are provided from perspectives of West, East and Islam. Simply, the term ‘awareness’ and the concept of ‘ability to be aware of the environment’ imply the notion of ‘Consciousness’ in linguistic and psychology. In a comparative study, we show that philosophical and scientific views in the past and contemporary period highly recommended the existence of ‘Consciousness’ attribute. In fact, all of the mentioned studies are talking about the same ideology based on the qualitative perceptions. However, there are some differences in parts, but the major theme is same.     

Analysing the correlation between social network analysis measures and performance of students in social network-based engineering education

Social network-based engineering education (SNEE) is designed and implemented as a model of Education 3.0 paradigm. SNEE represents a new learning methodology, which is based on the concept of social networks and represents an extended model of project-led education. The concept of social networks was applied in the real-life experiment, considering two different dimensions: (1) to organize the education process as a social network-based process; and (2) to analyze the students’ interactions in the context of evaluation of the students learning performance. The objective of this paper is to present a new model for students evaluation based on their behavior during the course and its validation in comparison with the traditional model of students’ evaluation. The validation of the new evaluation model is made through an analysis of the correlation between social network analysis measures (degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality, eigenvector centrality, and average tie strength) and the grades obtained by students (grades for quality of work, grades for volume of work, grades for diversity of work, and final grades) in a social network-based engineering education. The main finding is that the obtained correlation results can be used to make the process of the students’ performance evaluation based on students interactions (behavior) analysis, to make the evaluation partially automatic, increasing the objectivity and productivity of teachers and allowing a more scalable process of evaluation. The results also contribute to the behavioural theory of learning performance evaluation. More specific findings related to the correlation analysis are: (1) the more different interactions a student had (degree centrality) and the more frequently the student was between the interaction paths of other students (betweenness centrality), the better was the quality of the work; (2) all five social network measures had a positive and strong correlation with the grade for volume of work and with the final grades; and (3) a student with high average tie strength had a higher grade for diversity of work than those with low ties.     

The exchange rate regime in Asia: From crisis to crisis

Prior to the Asian financial crisis, most Asian exchange rates were de facto pegged to the US Dollar. During the crisis, many economies experienced a brief period of extreme flexibility. A ‘fear of floating’ gave reduced flexibility when the crisis subsided, but flexibility after the crisis was greater than that seen prior to the crisis. Contrary to the idea of a durable Bretton Woods II arrangement, Asia then went on to slowly raise flexibility and reduce the role for the US dollar. When the period from April 2008 to December 2009 is compared against periods of high inflexibility, from January 1991 to November 1991 and October 1995 to March 1997, the increase in flexibility is economically and statistically significant. This paper proposes a new measure of dollar pegging, the “Bretton Woods II Score”. We find that Asia has been slowly moving away from a Bretton Woods II arrangement.     

Does economic freedom fosters banks’ performance? Panel evidence from Malaysia

The present paper provides new empirical evidence on the impact of economic freedom on banks’ performance. The empirical analysis is confined to the Malaysian banking sector during the period of 1999–2007. We find that overall economic freedom and business freedom exerts positive impacts, implying that higher (lower) freedom on the activities that banks can undertake and entrepreneurs to start businesses increases (reduces) banks’ profitability. The empirical findings seem to suggest that corruption has a corrosive impact on Malaysian banks’ profitability. Interestingly, the impact of monetary freedom is negative, demonstrating the importance of government intervention in determining the profitability of banks operating in the Malaysian banking sector.     

On the Role of Intangible Information and Capital Gains Taxes in Long‐Term Return Reversals

Prior studies have linked long‐term reversals to the magnitude of locked‐in capital gains suggesting that reversals are driven by tax effects and not overreaction. I find that locked‐in capital gains do not explain the reversals in winners when winner returns are based on intangible information. In fact, the reversals for intangible return winners are long lasting and robust to controls for growth in assets and capital expenditures. To the extent that reversals associated with intangible information stem from investors’ overreaction to intangible information and given the prior results linking reversals only to intangible information, my results suggest that overreaction still explains reversal patterns in US stock returns.     

Determining the Optimum Guarantee Period for a One-Life Retirement Annuity

Abstract

We consider a risk averse retiree from a defined contribution plan who decides to purchase a onelife annuity with a guarantee period. Given the retiree has a bequest motive, we focus on the problem of determining the optimum length of the guarantee period. Assuming the retiree’s bequest function is proportional to his or her utility function, we determine necessary and/or sufficient conditions under which the retiree would choose an annuity with (i) no guarantee period, (ii) the maximum guarantee period, or (iii) an intermediate guarantee period.     

Heterogeneity in sales districts: Beyond individual-level predictors of satisfaction and performance

This article examines the influence of heterogeneity within a sales unit on the unit’s satisfaction and performance.Sales unit refers to a set of salespersons working out of the same office and for the same supervisor, andheterogenity refers to salespersons’ dispersion or variance on key dimensions. Specifically, drawing on theories in social psychology, the authors study the influence of sales unit heterogeneity in terms of (1) demographic characteristics (e.g., gender dispersion), (2) skills and rewards (e.g., reward dispersion), and (3) goal orientations (e.g., learning orientation dispersion) on a sales unit’s performance and job satisfaction levels. The hypotheses developed are tested using data from a study involving 476 salespeople belonging to 105 sales units in a large organization. The authors find that the focal heterogeneity variables account for nearly 25 percent of the total variance explained by the full set of independent variables included in the model. R. Venkatesh is an assistant professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business. His articles on product bundling, cobranding and sales force management have appeared or are forthcoming in theInternational Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, andMarketing Science. Goutam Challagalla is an associate marketing professor at Georgia Tech. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Texas at Austin, where he won the Outstanding Dissertation Award. He has published articles on sales management and marketing theory in marketing and psychology journals. Ajay K. Kohli is Isaac Stiles Hopkins professor of marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. During 2000–2001, he is on leave from Emory and working at the Monitor Company. He has published in several journals on market orientation, sales management, and organizational buying behavior.     

Interactive effects of country of origin and product category on product evaluations

This research examined the effects of country of origin and product category on product evaluations for 21 countries and 18 products. As hypothesized, product evaluations were highest for highly-developed countries, followed by newly-industrialized, newly-marketizing, and developing-country groups. Further, the product-category and country-of-origin effects interacted such that, depending upon the country group, different product categories received more, equal, or less favorable evaluations compared to other product categories. Several variables and processes underlying these effects are identified and integrated into a conceptual model.     

Approximate Bayesian Computation for a Class of Time Series Models

In the following article, we consider approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) for certain classes of time series models. In particular, we focus upon scenarios where the likelihoods of the observations and parameter are intractable, by which we mean that one cannot evaluate the likelihood even up to a non‐negative unbiased estimate. This paper reviews and develops a class of approximation procedures based upon the idea of ABC, but specifically maintains the probabilistic structure of the original statistical model. This latter idea is useful, in that one can adopt or adapt established computational methods for statistical inference. Several existing results in the literature are surveyed, and novel developments with regards to computation are given.     

陕西软件龙头企业成长状况分析与对策研究

软件龙头企业在软件产业化经营中具有关键作用,文章对陕西软件龙头企业成长状况及其存在的问题与差距进行分析,探讨陕西软件龙头企业实现快速健康可持续发展的对策。